Home, Boys, Home – Viking Theatre – Review
Review by Frank L

Home, Boys, Home – Written by Dermot Bolger

This is the third part of a trilogy of plays by Dermot Bolger which began with In High Germany (1990) and then The Parting Glass (2010).  Shane (Ray Yeats) is both narrator and participant in a world which is familiar at one level but also because of his years of absence now different.

Bolger uses football and the fortunes of the Irish football team during his lifetime as the back story to this 90-minute investigation into an Ireland which has become more diverse in a multiplicity of ways during his adulthood. Shane has lived outside Ireland for his working life and finds on his return a country full of surprises. He discovers he has an unknown daughter and a teenage grandson who is black. The grandson is a gifted football player on the verge of national recognition.

The other characters (both male and female) are diverse and some have different ethnic backgrounds. Fionnuala Gygax and Donna Anita Nikolaisen play these various roles. The casting is gender and colour-blind. It helps to underline the multiplicity of ingredients which contribute to the sense of belonging or not belonging in contemporary Ireland. However, organised crime remains a constant, which is now international in its scope. Football with its international reach and its players, in particular, are vulnerable even ones who aspire to be selected for their various youth teams.

The set, designed by Robert Ballagh, consists of a plain grey back wall on which various props, such as a cloth cap and a hold-all bag are hung. There are also a couple of bar stools and a back-to-back deck chair.

Bolger investigates memory and how memory influences contemporary happenings. Ireland has moved in his lifetime from a country of chronic, long-term emigration to a country where immigration has become an issue. That is a remarkable phenomenon. It inevitably has resonances for a returned emigrant like Shane.

The range of age, gender and ethnic diversity which Gygax and Nikolaisen have to encompass is, to say the least challenging. For the most part, they both make it work with some roles being more convincing than others. Yeates is confined to playing Shane whom he portrays convincingly

This play attempts to address some of the social complexities of Ireland as it is now. It delineates the lives of ordinary people who have to handle the challenges of many new and different social phenomena. Ultimately everyone, like Shane, has to navigate their own path and come to terms with the new realities.

From the reaction of the audience Bolger has succeeded in making engaging theatre. It was enthusiastically received. It was part of the Dublin Theatre Festival in the Civic Theatre in Tallaght and now is in the Viking in Clontarf. The cast and crew deserve praise for this production and for making it easily available to audiences outside the city centre. A transfer of a new play between two theatres, which are distant from each other but both part of the greater Dublin area, makes a great deal of sense.

CAST
Fionnuala Gygax, Donna Anita Nikolaisen, Ray Yeates

Written By: Dermot Bolger
Directed By: Raymond Keane
Produced By: Melissa Nolan
Stage Manager: Marella Boschi
Set Designer: Robert Ballagh
Lighting Designer: Conleth White
Costume Designer: Marie Tierney
Sound Design; Jenny O’Malley
Photographer/ Videographer: Ste Murray

Duration: 90 min. No interval
Age Suitability: 16+. Contains Strong Language